Biography
Dr. Cigdem Eskicioglu joined the Catalan Institution for Research & Advanced Studies (ICREA) as an ICREA Research Professor and the Research Group of Environmental Engineering & Microbiology (GEMMA-UPC) as a Distinguished Researcher in January 2025. She is also a Full Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, where she founded and leads the Bioreactor Technology Group (BTG). BTG operates four laboratory facilities: Anaerobic Digestion, Particle Sizing & Imaging, Thermochemical Processing, and Micropollutant Detection.
From 2020 to 2025 at UBC, Professor Eskicioglu was awarded the highly prestigious Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)/Metro Vancouver Senior Industrial Research Chair (IRC) and led an industrial partnership program on advanced resource recovery from wastewater. In collaboration with waste utilities, engineering companies, agricultural communities, and government agencies, her research program supports a long-term vision of advancing waste treatment processes for efficient contaminant removal, bioenergy conversion, and resource recovery.
As the global trend toward a circular economy accelerates, she focuses on recovering resources from waste in the forms of phosphorus, ammonia, biomethane, biohydrogen, and biocrude oil, while safely integrating novel reactor processes into treatment operations. Another key research area is the quantification, fate, and removal of emerging contaminants, such as hormones, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and flame retardants, to meet stringent discharge limits and reduce impacts on the natural environment.